


Guide

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Foxtrot [86]
Category: Dollhouse, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-17
Updated: 2016-03-17
Packaged: 2018-05-28 00:05:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6305650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the comment_fic prompt: <i>Any, any, so glad I'm not human because those people are crazy.</i> Todd the Wraith learns about television and other human insanities. Set post-series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Guide

Guide knew that the humans meant the box as a mercy, but it was a device of torture. His human guards called him Todd because John Sheppard called him Todd. They thought a human name made him more human, so they spoke to him as if he was human. They read from their newspapers, told him the scores of their favorite football teams. They tuned the box to a frequency that broadcast the football games. The rules were rudimentary and the strategies predictable. What was most interesting about the games was seeing how humans could perform at their peak. These Earth humans were a sturdy breed. The would make a hunt interesting.

After Guide pointed this out to his guards, in an effort at making conversation, they quickly recalibrated the box to a different broadcast called 'reality TV'. If this was reality for the Earther humans, Guide understood why men like John Sheppard and his fellow soldiers had traveled to a distant galaxy and taken on a war that was not their own. Humans were crazy. They wore inexplicable clothing, and they screamed at each other for no reason, and became upset at the slightest disruption in their lives. If Guide could have, he would have reached through the box and sucked the life out of each and every one of the Kardashians.

After he pointed this out to his guards, they laughed, and the continued to inflict this broadcast of the box on him. Only at night, when it was time to 'sleep', did they turn the box off. They also turned off the lights. They did not understand that Wraith did not need to sleep, only to feed.

But these days Guide did not need to eat as before. Doctors in white coats came to him often, tried new medicines on him, and sometimes they worked, for a little while. He could consume food the human way (and it was disgusting, stuffing his face, but the first time he tasted melted cheese, it was so, so good). What was baffling more than disgusting was the way the body had to void any food products it did not consume (and the body was so wasteful; feeding on life force was so much more efficient and clean). The guards became very embarrassed whenever Guide needed to void after eating meals, and he learned to warn them so they could turn their backs before he did so, though he did not understand their embarrassment.

The more he ate food, the stranger he felt, and he wondered if this was why humans were so crazy, because their food made them crazy.

Sometimes the medicine wouldn't work, and he would eat food, and he would be sick for days.

Once, after one such bout of sickness, he awakened to John Sheppard's voice. But John Sheppard was not there. John Sheppard was on the box, wearing ridiculously fancy human clothing adorned with colored ribbons and bright metal. His hair was so short Guide almost had not recognized him, but he would know John Sheppard's voice anywhere. John Sheppard was also Guide. They had shared the Gift of Life, and they would forever be linked. John Sheppard was seated at a table, with Rodney McKay and Teyla Emmagan and Ronon the Runner, and he was speaking to an audience of old humans.

"Hey, Todd," one of the guards said. "You were asking for him. While you were sick. He can't come here, obviously. He's testifying in front of the senate. But this was the best we could do."

Guide didn't understand half of that, but he appreciated the kindness of the human guard all the same. Kindness was not something known to the Wraith before John Sheppard. Kindness was insanity at its peak, hurting oneself for the benefit of someone else.

Sometimes the humans would come to question him for hours on end, and it was a welcome break from the torture of the box and Dancing with the Stars. He had little useful information about the current status of the Wraith alliances and hives because he was not among them. He could tell them all they wished about his time as a Wraith, how he had come into being just before the Lanteans fled from their sunken city, about how he had commanded hives and been a great warrior, and they listened, but he did not think they learned, not like John Sheppard would have.

Guide started to wonder if he had been infected with the human madness when he started to understand the broadcasts on the box. The guards had ceased reading to him about their football games and started testing new broadcasts on the box for him to enjoy. And he was beginning to truly enjoy them. Once they moved away from Reality TV to storytelling TV – and he was fast starting to understand that TV was less about reality and more about the reality the humans liked to tell stories about – he was pleased. He could keep an eye on the box and listen to the story and exercise to keep his body fit (because it needed all the strength it could get, with the repeated illnesses and the continued oddness of eating food and drinking water).

His favorite broadcasts were the kind that were moving drawings, not real humans, because looking at real humans for too long made him hungry sometimes, or made him at least feel a hollow echo of an old hunger he could no longer describe, and that made him restless and angry. There was a broadcast dedicated solely to the moving drawings, and he could watch endless varieties of them. Some had space battles with magnificent (if oddly humanoid) space craft. Others told of tales of dedicated clans fighting to protect themselves from other clans (the animal-changing clan on the bizarrely-named Fruits Basket being fiercely loyal to each other and those they adopted). (Bizarre names were part and parcel of human culture and Guide learned that his guards were Andy and Kyle.)

Guide came out of his silent contemplation of the shadows on the ceiling of his cell when unfamiliar footsteps rang on the floor outside his cell. He was on his feet in an instant, prowling close to the bars.

There was John Sheppard, not in the fancy uniform Guide had seen on the box. John Sheppard looked older, his hair touched with grey the way Guide often saw on older humans. John Sheppard was walking with Rodney McKay and Jennifer Keller and Major Lorne and – John Sheppard again?

"Hey, Todd," John Sheppard said. "Long time no see."

"Who is that?" Guide demanded, pointing at the other John Sheppard, the one with the too-long hair and timid shoulders.

"That's Joe," John Sheppard said.

Guide sniffed the air. "He is your brother?"

"Yes," John Sheppard said.

"I did not know you had kin."

"All humans have kin," John Sheppard said, and he smiled.

"Hi, Todd." Jennifer Keller smiled at him. "How are you doing?"

"I am well," Guide said, because it was what the humans expected. He was all too familiar with their strange rituals.

"Todd," Jennifer Keller said, "we've found a cure. A real one this time."

Guide shrugged. "Your doctors have come to me before, infected me with your cure before, but it ends badly every time."

"This one is different." Jennifer Keller nodded at the guards. "Let him out."

Guide was never let out of his cell without being shackled and chained by Andy while Kyle aimed a weapon at him. But this time Andy and Kyle simply escorted him into the hallway as if he were a guest.

Guide couldn't help but sniff more closely at Joe as he passed. Joe flinched and hid behind Major Lorne, who cast Guide a sharp look.

"Easy, big guy," John Sheppard said. But he and the others formed a perimeter around Andy and Kyle and Guide, and Jennifer Keller led the way to the room where the scientists experimented on Guide.

There was something new in the lab. A chair, the likes of which Guide had never seen before. There was a dark-haired man wearing a white lab coat, and also a shorter, slighter man with lighter hair wearing a similar coat.

"Todd," Jennifer said, "this is my husband, Dr. Simon Tam, and this is Topher Brink. They're here to help."

Guide had seen enough television to know what to say. "Congratulations on your marriage, Jennifer Keller. Hello, Dr. Tam and Mr. Brink."

Topher Brink and Dr. Tam both looked very nervous, but then Topher patted the chair and said,

"Hop in, Todd."

Guide glanced at John Sheppard. Both he and Joe wore matching grim expressions, but when John Sheppard sensed Guide looking, he nodded.

So Guide sat down in the chair. He heard someone press a few buttons, and the chair lowered (like the dentist chair he was subjected to on a regular basis once he started eating food). And then blue light flared all around him and –

Guide sat up. Everyone was staring at him.

"I'm hungry," he said, and everyone flinched back automatically.

Guide placed a hand on his stomach, baffled by the sensation. Usually his hunger burned in his hand, no matter what kind of food he was consuming (and the scientists' attempts at generating a replacement energy food had not gone well either). He searched for the words, and suddenly they were there. "I'm hungry for pizza."

It was Major Lorne who then produced a box and gave Guide some clothes that were more normal than the medical scrubs he always had to wear. Inside the box were special paints that Major Lorne used to paint Guide's face so he could almost pass as a human. Andy and Kyle looked incredibly nervous when John Sheppard told them he was taking Guide out for pizza, but after receiving assurances that Teyla Emmagan and Ronon the Runner would be part of the expedition, Andy and Kyle relented.

"My keepers will simply allow me to go with you?" Guide asked, shrugging on the black leather jacket. It reminded him of the one he had once worn.

"I'm Foxtrot John Sheppard," he said, and again with the human insanity for names upon changing names. "They trust me."

Jennifer Keller smiled at Guide. "Come on. Let's go get some pizza."

And so they went.

And the pizza was delicious.

Humans might have been insane, but their food was amazing.


End file.
